Rockness review

When The View come bounding on tonight there’s already queues snaking around Clash Arena eager to hear the Dundonian’s rip-through their newly-vamped set and of course, kick out the classics that brought them their success from ‘Hats Off To The Buskers’.

Leaning heavily on their new material (seven newly dusted gems are knocked out in the packed arena tonight), of which the opening two we can only say sound a bit like a pubescent Buzzcocks jamming through ‘I Should Coco’ with their guitars set to eleven (ie. very promising) and a welcome change to their usual opening stormer ‘Coming Down’.

Evidently happy to be back on home soil, they then tear through ‘Wasted Little DJ’s’, which expectedly ignites a sea of fist-punching mayhem, before esteemed producer and band friend Owen Morris joins the lads on organ duties for another newie. It’s a sound that seems to take their jangle-pop nuggets of old and transforms their new songs into the bolder, more complex ditties they are.

From the outset there may not seem to be anything treading ‘Same Jeans 2’ water, but with their sound now far bigger than before, album number two looks set to pack a real punch. ‘Skag Trendy’ and ‘Wasteland’ (the latter dedicated to “anyone fae Dundee” to riotous applause) sees one fan scale the lighting rig in exhilaration – a foolish move as undoubted sudden death would have ensued had a foot gone wrong- but it’s this scale of devotion that greets Dundee’s finest tonight.

Review Written by Clarke Geddes @ Clash Music

View the accompanying gallery of The View at Rockness